The High Cost of Paving Progress
A warning to the city that the frenetic pace of street regrading is pushing homeowners toward financial ruin.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Once more do we sound the note of warning: Street grading is going too far. The constant advance in the price of commodities has directly added to the expenses of the grades, which amount now to one-third more than they did a year ago. Not only are the burdens in this way growing heavier every month, but they are individually growing heavier in the multiplicity of improvements. A man owns six lots in six different places, and perhaps catches a different street assessment on every lot. One assessment he could pay without particular discomfort, but the six may occasion him great inconvenience, and possibly cause his pecuniary ruin. It is not only the expense of the street work that tells on the property-owner, but it is also the expense of the subsequent and consequent fixing of his lot and buildings. It is enough in a city like this to grade five or six streets a year, instead of more than twenty, as attempted in 1883.
“It is not only the expense of the street work that tells on the property-owner, but it is also the expense of the subsequent and consequent fixing of his lot and buildings.”
This 1883 report on the 'regrade' era highlights how infrastructure development in Seattle has historically been funded by shifting the massive costs onto property owners. The complaint about street assessments and rising construction costs sounds strikingly similar to contemporary debates over special tax levies and the cost of building density.
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